To Swift Mars

Polyvinyl; 2009

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There is probably some guy in your life that you like well enough but never think about. He's pleasant-looking if not actually handsome, and he usually dresses well, though he is never very flashy. He's always nice to you, and you've never heard a bad word about him. He's always just around, and you don't mind him being there, even if you never seem to connect with him in any meaningful way. This dude-- perhaps he's your co-worker, maybe he's you're classmate or neighbor-- is rather like the music of Cale Parks.

This is not a judgment on the personality of Cale Parks himself, who is a man, and not, remarkable name to the contrary, a gated community. It's hardly even a comment on the quality of his compositions, which are well-crafted, uniformly tuneful, and performed at a standard well above a very generous notion of average. The selections on To Swift Mars, the Aloha member's third solo release, reveal him to be a thoughtful, subtly clever musician with an ear for low-key melodies and a mind for cerebral indie rock poetry. Nevertheless, even though the songs are objectively interesting and well-written, they are not especially engaging on an emotional level, leading to a rather hollow listening experience.

To a certain extent, this is not a huge problem. Not all art needs to be emotionally charged, and there is a great deal of pleasure to be taken from Parks' cool, sterile grooves. The consistently neutral vibe of the music lends the record a degree of utility, both as background noise and as something to complement a blank state of mind. If this were instrumental music, or even some quasi-shoegazer thing with the vocals blurred into incoherent washes of sound, this would be a non-issue, but Parks makes a point of foregrounding his voice and lyrics, which indicate far more feeling than his singing or instrumentation expresses. The tell-don't-show approach has its merits on an intellectual level, and there is something to be said for exploring this sort of stoicism in song, but even the overtly melancholy "Eyes Won't Shut" is utterly impenetrable.

Though Parks never breaks from his reserved, diffident persona, he does allow for moments when he lets his guard down enough to seem more like a fascinating enigma and less like some nondescript guy on the outer edges of your social circle. The gentle organ-based duet "Knight Conversation" showcases his handsome croon and sense of moonlit romanticism, and the mellow funk of the single "One at a Time" is emboldened by percussive fills that convey far more passion than his aloof vocal performance. Ultimately, the thing that nags about this work is the way Parks comes right up to the edge of something quite powerful and exciting, but inexplicably keeps himself from going all the way. The man clearly has the talent and the skill to do great things, and one can only hope that eventually he'll get over the timidity that is holding him back.